Thursday, August 22, 2013

Energy Cost Calculator an example of a simple internet site.

I built the Energy Cost Calculator some time ago whilst I was reviewing the electricity cost of appliances and the payback period in terms of replacing an appliance with a lower running cost appliance. The Energy Cost Calculator proved to be very useful and assisted us in reducing our electricity usage to around half. We currently sit around 7 kWh per day. Pretty good for an household with three people.

I often look for opportunities for businesses that I support to see if developing a fairly simple but useful app might assist them in promoting their business. As long as things are kept simple the return on the investment with a single job may be sufficient to pay for the development of the app. Excluding my own time the cost for the site is around $10 a year. I expect the app will pay for itself many time over in a year, however if it doesn't, compare to other forms of advertising the risk for return is not large. Best of all the app is a useful tool which I use so really I'm pretty much ahead anyway.

By developing the Energy Cost Calculator as a web app rather than a native app, the same app can be accessed from any computer and most modern smartphones. That covers most internet users. An Apple or Android native app would take far more resources to develop and would only work on the platform it was designed for.

If you feel a simple web application might help you promote your business and require assistance, please give me a call.